Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Priapus will only have to move to a good address and call himself Eros to become darling of middle-aged women. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are twenty years old. Diverted from its normal and wholesome outlet in patriotism and civic or family pride, the need of the materialistic Masses for some visible Idol to worship will be driven into totally unsocial channels where no education can reach it. Divine honors will be paid to silver tea-pots, shallow depressions in the earth, names on maps, domestic pets, ruined windmills, even in extreme cases, which will become increasingly common, to headaches, or malignant tumors, or four o’clock in the afternoon.
Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish. Every corner-boy will congratulate himself: “I’m such a sinner that God had to come down in person to save me. I must be a devil of a fellow.” Every crook will argue, “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged.” And the ambition of every young cop will be to secure a death-bed repentance. The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums, and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with the animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Tragedy when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.
Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilization must be saved even if this means sending for the military, as I suppose it does. How dreary. Why is it that in the end civilization always has to call in those professional tidiers to whom it is all one it be Pythagoras or a homicidal lunatic that they are instructed to exterminate. O dear, Why couldn’t this wretched infant be born somewhere else? Why can’t people be sensible? I don’t want to be horrid. Why can’t they see that the notion of a finite God is absurd? Because it is. And suppose, for the sake of argument, that it isn’t that this story is true, that this child is in some inexplicable manner both God and Man, that he grows up, lives and dies, without committing a single sin? Would that make life any better? On the contrary it would make it far, far worse. For it could only mean this: that once having shown them how, God would expect every man, whatever his fortune, to lead a sinless life in the flesh and on earth. Then indeed would the human race be plunged into madness and despair. And for me personally at this moment it would mean that God had given me the power to destroy Himself. I refuse to be taken in. He could not play such a horrid practical joke. Why should he dislike me so? I’ve worked like a slave. Ask anyone you like. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I’ve taken elocution lessons. I’ve hardly ever taken bribes. How dare he allow me to decide. I’ve tried to be good. I brush my teeth every single night. I haven’t had sex for a month. I object. I’m a liberal. I want everyone to be happy. I wish I had never been born. >>>
from For the Time Being © The Estate of W. H. Auden
The speaker is King Herod, who has just ordered the massacre of the innocents, the slaying of the first-born of Judea. The question is whether Auden agrees with the predictions, particularly those in bold face. Is he, like Trilling in The Liberal Imagination, committed to the notion that that self-criticism is the writer’s first obligation? When Herod says “I’m a liberal,” is this a comment on Herod (self-delusion) or on liberalism? One could argue that Auden discredits these predictions by assigning them to the villainous Herod. Nevertheless, a case can be made that many of these negative predictions have come to pass.
The new two-volume set of W. H. Auden’s complete poems, meticulously assembled and presented by Edward Mendelson, is highly recommended (Princeton University Press). DL
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